That makes sense with how it felt, but it makes the book a little bewildering in concept.

I can definitely see how the much harder second half might just intimidate and discourage someone who has few other tsumego books (or none).

Here's a problem that I really got stuck on:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B EL&D2 p40 #6
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . O O O . . . . . . .
$$ | . O X X O O . O . , .
$$ | . X . a X . . . O . .
$$ | . . X . O . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ +----------------------[/go]

White should have played at a), black to live.

Spent some time reading http://www.toscanago.org/drupal/?q=node/165 (links to a pdf which is what I'm talking about)

I disagree with a lot of their recommendations, but it was interesting to see someone else's idea of the road to strong dan. I was especially surprised to see Cho's Advanced recommended for 4k. But also surprised to see it recommended for up to 4d. That's a pretty wide target audience!

Of course they're not very legible to someone who doesn't know Italian, but such is life.

Pondering their recommendations, I remembered something: I actually have Cho Chikun for the DS! I wonder how many of these problems are the same as the ones in tasuki's pdfs. So I spent some time playing it, and will probably continue later.

The interface is dated, the problems often feel like they have too few variations accounted for, and it's completely incomprehensible what any of the text means unless you know how to read Japanese, but somehow it still seems okay to me. I also don't really notice if they're the same problems or not. One of the save slots is from 2009 ... how time has flown.

It keeps track of how well (or not) you do, so I can compare and with confidence say that I'm better than I was six years ago. GO ME!

So I looked at my stats on http://kgs.gosquares.net/ to better understand why rank upgrade isn't happening.

It turns out I've won nearly two thirds of all ranked games this month.

It turns out I've lost nearly two thirds of all ranked games last month.

Worse, I played a lot more games in December and my all-time win ratio is just a tad short of 50%. That seems very much consistent with a stagnant rank. Can't blame the system there.

I guess I'll just keep going. If I can win 2/3 of all games during February too, it'll come unstuck eventually. Recent encounters have put to rest my feeling of sandbaggery, somewhat. I might also be hitting ratings islands with always randomly choosing opponents, so that some will seem far too strong, and some far too weak.

Besides, if I can still let an unconditionally alive corner die (twice last week ), I should maybe feel a bit more patient and humble about my progress.

It's still obvious that I'm getting better. And, above all, it's very obvious that I still have fun playing.

Not really keeping with the schedule, at all.

I realize that I miss the sense of completing things, and it's not really about if I do any tsumego. I did several hundred this week, just none of it as part of the schedule. None of it part of an organized effort.

I need to return to the Plan and stop dithering around. I'm losing focus and while that is entertaining, I need to remember that I want to be a dan-level player.

The past two months have given me a large change in how I play, and in how well I can see ahead. It would be a waste to keep faffing about aimlessly when I have such an obvious improvement. Just today, I managed to breach 50/50 win/loss for the KGS account I've used since october, despite the disaster that december was.

I won a game today where I took five handicap stones (+14.5). I also won one where I gave two, taking well over half the stones my opponent played in the process (I really wonder why this opponent didn't resign, +162.5). It's obvious I'm playing a lot better than I was, and I shouldn't throw away the progress I've made.

Even more than that, I shouldn't throw away the rate at which I've made progress. I'm sure that if I stop progressing much now, I'll still see one or two ranks added over time. That is unambitious, though. It feels good to know I've improved, but if I slack off now I will lose that good feeling completely.

If I have to stagnate, let it be around 5-6d. Or higher. But NOT lower. I've got to keep pushing beyond my comfort zone, and I seriously need to allow myself to master, one by one, sets of tsumego which arm me with weapons of mass destruction.

Semeai which used to be dubious are now clear to me. I know who would win them, so I can confidently tenuki or play them out. Various times, I've used ladders which don't work in order to make something else work. A lot of corner groups die because I know how to kill them now. It's a big deal. I can capitalize on the mistakes of others where before I had to shy away.

I haven't even gone through a quarter of my study material. There's clearly a vast amount of room for improvement, if only I can stay focused and structured. I clearly have the capacity to do this, all it takes is doing it. I certainly seem to find the time to waste on go. I need to invest it more carefully, and stick with the plan.

Why do I want to be stronger? Bragging rights, naturally. I will spend hundreds of hours of work just to have people stare at me in quiet amazement and concern when I mention I'm actually really good at a very obscure board game.

Your plan sounds a whole lot more organised than mine does!

Keep at the plan, get those people staring at you in amazement and concern!

PeterN

There, all that pep talk had some effect. At this rate my first pass through Cho's E will be finished well before this week is over.

My KGS ratings graph has started to rise, at long last, though it's not going as fast as I might want it to. I really did lose a lot of games in December, but they were fun to play. Lots of experiments, which have taught me a lot.

I've won all my games this month.

Well, I haven't played many games yet this month, but it feels good while it lasts.

Lots of bulky five in the 700s. Feels a little weird after seeing so many harder problems, but okay...

I also lost one game today. So much for going a month without losing.

Well then. Today is productive in the extreme.

Not only has the first pass of Cho's E been completed, I managed a whopping ten games (7W/3L).

This is a good day, and it isn't even over yet. I want more days like this.

Some thoughts:


As an aside, I don't want to discourage you from posting your progress in problem collections, etc., but I wonder if the volume of those posts discourages discussion of your more discourse and game oriented posts.

First off, thanks for that review.

Several of the things you mentioned didn't seem obvious to me, although especially your suggestion for 116 seems like something I SHOULD have seen.

Since it's a bit old, I wonder how you feel about my play a month later. Is it more or less the same? Does it seem to have a little more bite?

WORST game of today:


This contains sincere derp. Made a very large plunge in the top left quadrant. I really should have resigned, it deserves the title of worst game.
I think move 127 should have been spent saving that group.

BEST game of today:


Not sure it is THE best, but it's a clear demo of how often it's all about a single big capture. It's not worse than the other wins by much, if it is.
I felt very much in control for last 50 moves or so.

I seem to have a set routine. 1) mess up the opening a little bit, 2) ???, 3) big capture to win or lose. It feels a bit artless, but not so artless that I would give up on winning games with it.

Looking at these two specific games, I also notice I spent less time on them than I thought. I was sure I spent around 15 minutes of my time, like I usually do. Wonder if I should make myself slow down a little more. The derp in the worst game should have been avoidable with a little more forethought, after all.


Second, I've actually been thinking about the value of those progress updates.

They really do help me stay on point, but they also seem a bit spammy, and I can't imagine they're the world's most interesting reading. I'd either solve it with a second thread (such extravagance! ) or maybe a different frequency (weekly?). Somehow, even if nobody actually cares or reads, pushing them here makes me feel a little bit more accountable.

I agree completely, and in that respect, it can be quite valuable.

As for the games:




Honestly, in the second game, black had a won game and threw it away with a series of weak, passive, and otherwise slack moves. Being able to take advantage of these is good. Not playing into a situation where you rely on your opponent playing this way is better.

You seem to have the bloodlust, so I would recommend playing games where you explicitly aim to kill nothing and win on points. That doesn't mean you don't attack, but you need to have a goal for each and every attacking move that does not include killing something. Killing should be a last resort, though it may at time become necessary because your opponent is being that unreasonable. In general, it's easier to live than to die, so you have to neglect a group to some degree before it becomes killable, even.

I will tell you, one of the things I fear most in a game is making a kill early, because against anyone worth their salt it's too slow to remove all the aji and it will come back to life and haunt you in the worst way, or you will spend the rest of the game stepping around kos, etc. that you can't afford to fight because of the aji, while your opponent will be making things as complicated as possible to try and come back. Additionally, you'd be surprised how big a group you can lose in exchange for sente and some outside moves and still come out ahead. I've had games I won because I sacrificed a 40 point group early on. Some of the outside stones got caught in a semeai to kill and I consolidated half the board in the process of letting my opponent capture it.

As you get stronger, also, games will be knockouts less and less frequently, so you'll have to be able to keep it up for all 10 rounds and win on points.

In terms of reviews, though, it can be more helpful to show games you lose, and sometimes particularly those you lose small.

Thanks for those reviews. Seems like you pretty much share my self-diagnosis. Even the ??? part. It's also very interesting to see I still make relatively simple tactical mistakes. I should be able to do better there with only a little effort.

I'm happy that you don't generally see that I'm making impossible invasions, but rather that opponents leave the door open for me to make them. That means I should naturally get to the point where evenly ranked opponents no longer leave me that much room, and I had better become as good at the opening as they are. You (and others) have been quite clear that my opening proves I don't know what to choose, and I don't feel very effective in the first 20 moves or so.

Avoiding a big kill, though. That's an interesting challenge. I'll try that a few times this week. I expect I'll feel like I'm letting go of perfectly capturable groups, but that's what makes it interesting.

My problem in selecting recent games I lost by a small margin is that I didn't actually have any. They're all in the same vein as those two, where something big dies and it settles the game.

So, in addition to the no kill pet shel go game, I should go for a smaller margin of victory. These other purposes also come to mind: How do you practice yose if you nearly always force a resignation? How do you practice judging the balance of points if you just fire the artillery until someone submits?

You've got to admire a game where it's completely natural to be winning most of your games and you still find a whole slew of faults with how you play. It guards against complacency, but it also guards against submissive acceptance of limitations. There are things I could do, to play better.

So this week, I'll try to create at least two games which meet these specific criteria:

1.Ends with scoring.
2.Less than 15 points difference.
3.No kills of groups larger than 10 stones.

I'll post them in the review section, next saturday, whichever two come closest to both looking good (to me) and meeting these criteria.

In the first game the invasion on the right side with looks premature. Also, even though it is on a vital point (S-09), the better way is to start with the peep on Q-08. Then if White connects at Q-07, Black S-09 is good.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Weird how it seems obviously good if I spend only 10 seconds reading it out, but I didn't actually think of it at the time. Thanks for the tip.

So far, so struggle.

501OP is not an easy ride for me. I get between 1-3 right on each page, and 1 more often than 3. I think I got all 4 on only one page. Many of the problems I get wrong don't seem more obvious after seeing the solution. There's clearly a wide gap between me and understanding this well.

Some of the easier problems I solved by reading it out. This doesn't strike me as understanding the opening, but at least some of it makes sense.

For each problem, I first try to be honest with myself by asking, "What would I do in practice?" then I try to solve it by the principles they give in the book. Then see if the hint under the diagram changes my expectation of the correct answer. Only after all three steps fail to hit on a correct answer do I count it as a failure.

And that still leaves me with around 40% failed. Maybe this is simply too hard for me?

I keep playing games with large captures and resignations, too. Apparently my bloodlust is pathological, since I clearly have some sort of aversion to peaceful endings.

A sudden burst of insight (or madness): Stop doing life and death problems for a while, because they focus your game on living and dying too much. You might want to consider looking at a book of opening problems instead, if you want problems, or a book on attacking, or joseki. You'll keep improving, but ideally with a different focus to round out your game more.

Part of the capture problem, though, is the level you play at. Your opponents aren't any better than you, and they (and you) likely misjudge situations like when to tenuki from a group, or what constitutes a reasonable invasion or reduction and what you should expect from it. You might want to try playing a set of games against slightly stronger players (I've heard 3 stone games recommended for improving, or at least about that rank difference). They'll know when to punish and when to invade or not better than your normal opponents.

I'm always available on DGS if you're interested (this goes for everyone). Just mention where I might know you from if you challenge me and I can't recognize your username. I will confess, though, I probably don't take enough time with each move there (take advantage!).

I find it hard to really fault the focus on killing when I still manage a 55-65% win ratio every week for the past 6 weeks or so.

Curiously, my performance when giving handicap is insane (70% win ratio for this month so far) while when taking handicap it's about 50% (but very rare, so I'm on 4 losses and 3 wins). It doesn't paint a clear case for heedless folly anyway.

I'm quite content to allow myself to enjoy the moment until I come up a rank or two and it gets hard again.

I'm also a bit unsure if DGS is the right format for me. I play a lot of moves within two or three seconds, and I worry I might lose focus in the middle of a "fast" sequence which takes hours or days (!). On the other hand, there's not much time pressure if I can just sit back, calm down and retake focus. Even if that takes a day.

Ah, well, I'm curious now...

1.Book pass complete!
Finished GGPfB3 for the second time.

I wouldn't call it a smooth ride, but it's much better than the first time.

Demanding perfect certainty for each problem is very demanding, but it's a big difference to how I did it before. I went over this book from start to finish at least once, before my hiatus. It used to be fully impossible to get them all right.

The same pattern as I had with EL&D1 and LUR2 holds. The second pass feels less like lunatic mode, a lot of at-a-glance solving. It makes me stop and examine carefully, because I'm terrified I might be getting complacent. It's only hard mode, now, and I'm really just jumping at shadows.

Another thing I noticed with GGPfB3, the answers. Since I have to exhaustively prove to myself that each move is correct, I find the answers a touch on the sparse side. They're not wrong, but they are often very poor at explaining why something is correct. My DDK self didn't find them very explanatory.

Even now, for some of these problems, after the first two correct moves, I spent non-trivial time (30-90 seconds?) checking out possible ways of resisting the correct answer, before accepting it as correct. "After white cannot make two eyes." is not really obvious at a glance in many cases.

There are limitations on space, since this is printed material, but often I wonder if it wouldn't have been helpful to include a few more moves. Not for me now, but for me back then, and anyone else at that level. Discovering what kind of moves are correct is enormously helpful to get you to broaden your thinking, but "Study and find them for yourself!" isn't everyone's preferred method.

Despite all that, this is now apparently the easiest book in my lineup. Two or three more passes and it won't be in my lineup anymore.

2.Progress reports
I'm not entirely sure, but I think it does slow down my work rate when momentary dips in tsumego processing rate aren't reported. There just isn't that little nagging feeling that I should make time, instead of letting it slide.

I don't know if the previous regime of daily posts is best, though. I need something different. Something less onerous, but not less effective.

I've got just the thing: time-shifted batch reporting! All the functionality of daily reports, without the spam! Pseudoaccountability technology makes a giant leap into the century of the Frui-- I mean, OUT of the century of the Fruitbat!

3.DGS
Because of skydyr, I now have a DGS account. Since one game only seemed a little dull, I added created ten zero-handicap games open to all comers. Takers range from 5k to 19k. That should count as 2-3k KGS to 16-17k KGS. Probably.

The furthest along is only 41 moves in, so far. It's a MUCH slower pace than I'm used to. This idea that you can just sleep on your next move, it's novel. I find the games rearing up in the back of my head while doing something else. Very strange way of playing.

It definitely feels like another category, so it's not at all strange that the ratings are not the same as on KGS. Playing on DGS feels halfway between doing tsumego and actually playing. It feels unnatural that I can spend 5 minutes on a single move, even if it's not a particularly important one.

I guess the biggest mental strength for DGS is ability to be patient and go over a situation until the next move feels completely right. There's no time constraint to counterbalance this. At least, if I've got all day, one single move doesn't seem like it would put me under any pressure. I can clearly deliver thousands of reasonably 4k-like moves in a single day, after all.

4.On 501OP
I don't feel entirely ready to digest this book as deeply as I want to. About a quarter of it is fully indigestible, which is disappointing, but hopefully also temporary. There isn't a lot of incomprehension one can maintain with continuing study.

So I'll take a different tack vs the usual tsumego. I'll just go over it, and let it slide that I really don't understand some of it. The three quarters which are perfectly sensible should offer some benefit, at least. Hopefully, they will provide some sort of mental framework with which to understand the rest.